Ice Cold Death

by Alexes Razevich

  Mere magic?

  “What do I count on then?”

  “Me. Same as I’ll rely on you.” He gave me a humorless smile. “Don’t let me down.”

  “You’re nervous too,” I said, feeling it suddenly rise in him like steam. He stared out across the sand to the ocean without speaking. I felt him will his nervousness away.

  “Cautious,” he said, looking at me again. “Busy trying to think through possibilities for a situation that’s impossible to predict. It’s futile but feels better than sitting here just waiting. And much better than getting freaked out.”

  “Sheesh,” I said lightly. “Here you go getting all wise on me again.”

  The back of my neck prickled. A small ache began inching its way up my skull. Dee started to say something, but I cut him off.

  “It’s nearby,” I said in a whisper. A normal tone seemed wrong—as if the klim might hear us even though I knew it wasn’t close enough to hear my words unless it had the hearing of an owl.

  “Where?” Dee said, casually turning his head left and right.

  “Down a ways. A few blocks south of the pier. Going north. Moving away from us.”

  Without Dee’s elixir, I couldn’t read the klim’s thoughts, but counting on the extra magic Dee had given me, I tried to feel it.

  The beast’s emotions blasted over me. Desperation. Hunger. Hatred.

  I felt the beast calculating.

  Hunting.

  We had to make the klim turn around. Catch our psychic scents. Come to us.

  “Dee,” I said.

  He swung his head to look at me, alarmed by my tone.

  I leaned close to him. “I have to tell you now. Before anything happens and I don’t get the chance later. I love you, Diego Adair. Deeply.”

  My heart pounded. My mouth went dry. I wanted to take back the words the moment I’d said them. What was wrong with me that I’d say such a thing?

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  But I had to get a rise out of him. Generate strong emotions from both of us. Strong enough that the klim couldn’t resist. That he’d hunt us down to feed on all that we felt. That it would realize I was close and come for me.

  Emotions radiated from Dee like solar flares. Surprise. Pleasure. Confusion. Fear. Disbelief.

  And from me—shame. That I’d lied about something so important.

  Except, I realized, it was maybe a little true.

  And that kicked off a whole new set of feelings cascading through me. If the klim liked the taste of my conflicted emotions, I was offering him a feast—and myself. The klim wanted its revenge—me, dead. All it had to do was come and get me.

  I grabbed Dee’s arm. “It’s caught our scent. It’s moving this way.”

  All I had to do was figure out which of the many people heading our way was the beast. And figure a way to get it to come into my house.

  A woman in blue yoga pants and a black and blue tunic strode toward us, her eyes locked in our direction, her gaze darting between Dee and me.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said to him. “I really need to fuck you. Fuck you so hard. Right, right now.”

  God, I was such a bitch. First, I freak him out. Then I dangle sex at the most wildly inappropriate moment.

  Not that Dee was fool enough to believe me, though he certainly had been surprised by my words. Most of him had figured out now what I was doing. But part of him was also sort of willing.

  That was good. Real desire pouring off him. Real fear pouring off me. I trusted Dee, but I was about to put my life in his hands, and only an idiot wouldn’t have some trepidation. I had a giant bag of it.

  We walked fast straight across the Strand, up the path to my porch and then inside. I shut the door but left it slightly ajar. Four bottles stood on the table in my foyer—two for klim, two for us for later.

  I picked up the two meant for the klim.

  “Get the others and come into the parlor,” I said.

  We needed the klim completely inside the house.

  All the klim need do was push the door open and join us. All we had to do was make sure it did. I stood by the chaise looking through the bay window to the Strand wondering what else I could say to Dee to get an emotional rise.

  His hands were on my chest suddenly, pushing me down on the chaise. I yelped in surprise. He started to fall on top of me but caught himself with his arms so that he loomed above me.

  “Maybe I love you, too,” he said. “What do you think about that?”

  20

  There was no time to sort out whether Dee was trying to generate new emotions, or meant what he’d said and if he did, how I might feel about that. The door slammed open.

  The klim had thrown off its human disguise. It sped into the parlor and stood at the end of the sofa, standing on its hind legs, glaring down at us. The wart hog-like horns curving upwards from either side of its mouth dripped brown saliva. A smell like sewage radiated from it. Its bumpy, gray toadish skin seemed to gleam from some dark, internal light.

  The klim roared and reached a horn-covered, four-fingered hand toward my throat. My heart galloped. Dee began chanting the spell that would send it back to the Brume. I joined in.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Dee pull the stopper from his bottle. Mine had rolled between the cushions when he’d pushed me down on the chaise. I dug around madly trying to find it without taking my eyes off the klim. I didn’t know if the liquid in Dee’s bottle would be enough or if we needed the amount in both. Both, I reasoned, or we wouldn’t have two bottles.

  Dee dashed the elixir in the klim’s face. The beast stepped back as if punched and roared again. It swiped its hand at Dee’s head. He ducked away.

  I found the second bottle. My hand closed around it and I pulled it from behind the cushion. I yanked the stopper free and splashed the elixir on the klim’s face and chest. The beast screamed, its wail shrinking as it faded and then was gone.

  I stared at the spot where it had been, barely believing we’d managed to send it back.

  “Quick,” Dee said. “We have to follow it.”

  My pulse thundered in my temples. I drew a breath and centered myself the way I might on the rink in the midst of a critical play. I fingered the red orb in my pocket, its magic zinging through me like electrical jolts. How was I going to hold the orb to close the rift if it hurt like that?

  Dee handed me one of the two remaining vials of elixir. We drained both vials dry.

  My ears popped, the same way they had at the ice rink and before my vision of the Brume. Multicolored sparks filled the room. The eagle tattoo on my arm prickled and grew warm. Dee took my hand at the same moment that a flash of intense blue light burned my eyes. I squeezed them shut and held onto him. The sound of storm winds whooshed in my ears, but there was no brush of air on my skin.

  “Oona.” Dee’s voice was urgent.

  I opened my eyes. The Brume stretched out around us, a sulfurous desert with high, jagged hills in the distance. This wasn’t where I’d entered before. There was no wall, no river of red molten liquid. I had no way to judge how near or far to the rift we were.

  The acrid air was as yellow as the sand—a jaundiced world. I scanned the land and the sky. Nothing crawled, slithered, ran, or flew that I could see. No wind blew. The silence was the stillness of a vacuum. It made my skin crawl.

  Dee elbowed me lightly and jutted his chin in sign for me to look where his gaze was focused. The membrane. We’d landed well away and had a walk ahead of us. Once we reached the membrane, we’d still need to find the rift.

  “Where did you send the klim?” My words seemed swallowed by the silence.

  “As far from the membrane as I could,” Dee said, striding off.

  I rushed to keep up. “So, we won’t have to worry about it?”

  Dee shrugged. “Who knows what magic the klim has.”

  “So, worry about it,” I said, “and maybe about other creatures, too.”

  “It’s a dark world,” he said,
and quickened his pace. “Full of dark things.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my throat going dry again. “I’ve seen some of them.”

  Dee must have heard the scratch in my voice. He reached into a front pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out an old-fashioned flask—silver, with runes inscribed on it and curved to lie discretely against a body.

  “Water,” he said as he handed it to me.

  I drank as I walked. The water was warm but wet. It soothed my throat.

  “Thanks,” I said and handed it back.

  Dee took a swig and stowed the flask back in his pocket. I wondered what other things were tucked away in those pockets, things he thought we might need, magical things.

  My legs were beginning to tire by the time the diaphanous membrane loomed in front of us, a translucent fence reaching toward the sky. Except—I realized—the fence curved inward toward the top. I craned my neck to look skyward. Not a fence at all. A dome. A way to keep in things that flew.

  Not that it made any difference. Fence or dome, as long as the rift remained, the chance of more things from this world coming into ours remained too.

  Since we’d come into the Brume, the only sounds had been our words and the breadcrumb crunch of the sand beneath our feet. I cringed when a long, low whistle sounded behind us. I swung around and looked back but saw only the seemingly endless stretch of yellow desert and yellow sky.

  “Did you hear that?” I said quietly.

  Dee didn’t speak, only nodded.

  Something was out there, behind our backs. The skin on my neck prickled. I started to speak again, but Dee shot me a warning look. I kept my thoughts to myself. There was nothing we could do anyway. If something was hunting us—and something definitely was—we’d have to wait until it got closer to deal with it.

  If we could deal with it.

  The fresh eagle and sunrays tattoo on my upper arm tingled, almost as if assuring me it would do the best job it could. Magic ink or not, we were vulnerable. I’d be stupid to forget that.

  As if I could forget. The whistle tore through the air again, still behind us but closer now. I looked all around but couldn’t see anything. What if whatever was approaching was invisible to our eyes? It could come right down on our heads before we knew it.

  Dee seemed almost to not have heard the whistle. He had, though. I saw it in the slight tensing of his shoulders. Felt it in the sudden shift of attention in his mind. He didn’t let the whistle distract him. Goalie focus—calm but ready.

  Lessons I’d learned on the rink flooded through my mind. Anticipate without panic. See the whole field of play. Know what you’re going to do next, and next after that, before you make your move. Actions that led to victory. I exhaled slowly, releasing my tension and worry as best I could.

  Focus. Victory was all about focus.

  I’d touched the membrane in my vision of the Brume. I touched it now. It felt softer than it had before. Did that mean it was thinner now and would be easier to breach, or more elastic and harder to pierce? Hard to anticipate your next move when you didn’t have much history to draw on.

  Focus.

  I kept my palm on the membrane as we moved forward, feeling, as well as looking, for any small tears I might have missed before.

  A clicking noise sounded behind us. When I turned to look for the source of the sound, my fingers slipped into a small hole in the membrane.

  “Dee,” I said wanting to tell him about the tear I’d found. And about the spider-looking thing the size of a Saint Bernard hurtling toward us, its eight eyes focused on me, its front pinchers held up and clicking like castanets.

  Dee glanced at me and then over my shoulder.

  “Listen,” he said and tapped his hand against his head.

  I tuned into him. His mind was racing, flipping between how to deal with the spider-thing and sending me the words to the spell to close the hole—the one he’d memorized at Sudie’s. I pulled the orb from my pocket and hoped to hell it would work. The orb sent an electric jolt of magic zinging through my hand and up my arm, but I held on to it.

  I felt a new tension in Dee and turned my head to see what he was seeing. Yellow dust rising across the sulfur-sand desert.

  Beasts. The word blasted from his mind. Hurry, Oona.

  This wasn’t even the main rift. How many other holes and tears did we need to close to heal the membrane? Were there things here, small but evil, that could fit through a hole this size?

  I sorted through Dee’s thoughts and focused on the spell words. I rubbed the orb over the hole and intoned the healing spell Dee was sending.

  I hardly registered the sound of Dee’s speaking voice—spell words completely different from the ones I needed to say. A sizzling sound and a high-pitched wail rose behind me, but I didn’t look. Not until the hole was closed and smooth under my palm.

  “Thank you,” a voice—a strange watery sound—whispered in my head

  I stood, looking for the source of the words, but saw nothing. The spider thing was gone. A pile of ash lay where it had stood.

  Dee ran his hands across his hair, pushing it back from his face.

  The dust devil stirring the sand had grown larger. And closer. Dee gave my shoulder a little shove and broke into a run.

  “Slow down,” I said, wishing he could read my mind like I read his. So much faster and easier than words. “Slow. Down. I need to feel for small tears.”

  He slowed, but I felt his tension ratchet up.

  Forget the damn holes, he thought. Find the main rift and fix it before that fucking thing coming across the desert reaches us.

  The watery voice whispered in my head again. “No more holes but the one.”

  The membrane. The membrane was alive and sentient. The small tear had pained it, but the rift pained it more.

  I broke into a run, blessing hockey for giving me endurance.

  Even so, I was breathing hard by the time I spotted the place where the membrane was torn. And the hole. Bigger now than when I’d been here before. More ragged. Gaping.

  I glanced across the desert. The swirling sand was closer—close enough to see small clumps of sand rising and falling. The ink on my arm tingled, warning me of danger, ramping up its power to give what protection it could. I felt Dee center himself and focus on the sand cloud. I didn’t know if something was in the cloud or it was the sand itself we needed to worry about. Not that it mattered. Judging from the controlled tension roiling off Dee, we needed to be plenty worried in general.

  I knelt beside the rift. I wanted Dee to slip across back to our world now, before I closed the hole, but knew he wouldn’t. No more than I would. We wouldn’t abandon the other.

  Dee was again chanting a spell out loud while thinking the enchantment to close the rift. I had to concentrate hard to separate the spoken and thought words, since both were going on in his thoughts. I found the part of his mind focused on the healing spell but only listened enough to be sure I was right. I’d got the spell now. I knew it by heart. I chanted low and rubbed the orb over the ragged edges of the rift.

  The sand cloud was close enough now that I could see into it.

  “The klim told them all,” the watery voice said. “Told about the rift, the easy prey on the other side the klim had devoured. Cloud rolled for days to get here, to burst through, to destroy what contains it. Other creatures come too, seeking to destroy me, seeking the way across. You and the wizard must save me.”

  I saw them, the other creatures. They came walking on two, four, and six legs across the sand. They came scuttling and slithering and flying. I rubbed the orb over the edges of the rift. It was closing but slowly. Too slowly.

  “Hurry,” said the watery voice.

  The cloud was nearly on Dee. I’d learned the healing spell but stayed in his head. I heard him intoning spells to turn back the cloud. Saw the cloud halt, spinning in place. Felt it trying to decide what to do next.

  Dee had pulled a silver ball the size of a newborn’s fist f
rom his pocket. It lay in his outstretched palm, white light pulsating from it. Light emanated from him, too, crazy purple light bathing him in its glow. His voice was strong, intoning the spells that held back the sand cloud and the stalking beasts. I turned my attention back to the rift.

  “Jetoh de bycon freedsa,” I said under my breath. The orb sliding on the torn membrane made a small shooshing sound. The air was hot and still. Perspiration rolled slowly down my sides.

  Step it up, Oona, I heard in my head and looked Dee’s way. The light from the silver ball was fading, its power running out. The eagle on my arm tingled and prickled. Maybe its protection was running out too. What good was magic that had a time limit?

  A great blast of fury from the sand cloud rolled through my mind. The cloud didn’t have thoughts the way humans did, only basic emotions that roiled in it like the churning waves of a turbulent sea. Waves sought the shore. The cloud sought the rift. In its wake lay scattered bits of beasts and beastlets that had stood in its way.

  We stood in its way.

  Dee turned to face it and stretched out his right arm. A great pulse of energy that I saw like a blinding purple light, shot from his palm. The cloud hesitated, spinning on itself in place, then rushed forward again.

  The cloud seemed stronger now, as if it had nourished itself on the energy sent to stop it. If the cloud ate magic, grew stronger on power, how could we stop it?

  I jammed into Dee’s mind. He’d seen the same thing I had, drawn the same conclusion. His magic was useless against the cloud. Worse than useless—it made the cloud more violent.

  Dee reached into his pocket and drew out something small enough to fit in his closed fist. He drew a deep breath, then ran toward the cloud.

  “No!” I yelled.

  Dee and the cloud collided, dirt and sand spewing into the air. The cloud spun faster, expanding until it covered him completely and he was lost from my sight. I heard screams. Dee’s. I felt for his thoughts but found nothing.

  “No,” I shouted again. I jumped to my feet, all instinct, fury, and determination, and ran toward the sand cloud. The sigil on my arm burned. Energy and power burst through me.